Songs of the Dancing Gods

The body of Tiana the demigoddess moved, shuffling a bit, woodenly, more like a puppet than a real person, and stood, blankly staring, beside Boquillas.

“It’s a good thing the sound of that crap in the courtyard doesn’t reach up here or we’d have them down there, too!”

“Oh, I thought of that immediately,” Boquillas told him. “That’s why I put a cone of silence on this chamber.”

Tiana watched with horror as the Master of the Dead stood facing both women’s bodies, and placed one hand on Boquillas’ head, the other, with a reach, on her old, original head. It hurt to see that body as much as it hurt to see Joe’s; to be this close, to be in the same room, only a few feet away, with someone with the means to put her back, and know that she might as well have been on the moon…

There was no sound, no magical pyrotechnics, no sensation at all, yet, suddenly, Mahalo McMahon’s old body stiffened and the eyes glazed over, while, at the same time, the body of Tiana seemed to be filling up with life, animation, and motion.

It had taken Sugasto no more than thirty or forty seconds. No incantations, no nothing. That, perhaps, was the scariest thing of all.

At the same moment the Tiana body came fully to life, intelligence flooding the eyes and the movements becoming natural, the real Tiana felt her nose ring crackle once more. The body whose code the ring, had borne, McMahon’s body, was now technically dead. Suddenly, she realized, for just a fleeting moment, she wasn’t anyone’s property at all.

With a kick from her runner’s legs and a leap from her dancer’s skills, Tiana made the doorway almost as her old body shouted, “Stop her, you idiot!”

Sugasto whirled. Even though Tiana was already out of sight, he did not give chase. Instead, he simply raised his right hand, cupping it slightly, then pulled it back, as if grabbing a ball and pulling it toward him.

In the hall, Tiana suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, suffering tremendous vertigo. Then, slowly, she felt as if she were rising, going up, out and away from her body, then floating back down the hall. Yes, she could see her body! See it just standing there!

The pull continued, and she went right through the stone wall and back into the sorcerer’s room. Sugasto smiled, hand now toward her, and she felt herself moving, being guided by an unseen but irresistible force. Now she saw it! Joe’s body, standing there, wooden, lifeless yet alive! Something was drawing her toward it, and it was swallowing her, merging with her…

She staggered, blinked, and shook her head which seemed full of cobwebs. She felt… different. Strange.

Sugasto chuckled. “You see, Boquillas? I wasn’t the total fool when I first met them. She’s always been mine any time I wanted her.”

“What—?” Tiana managed, but the voice sounded low, deep, and hollow, alien to her. “You—you put me in Joe’s body!” She didn’t want to be in Joe’s body—she wanted Joe in there.

“And in there you’ll stay, until I say otherwise,” the sorcerer told the new man. “And, remember, I can pull you out again at any moment, no matter where in Husaquahr you might be. And even as a soul, I can hold you and cause you unimaginable torment. Don’t even think of moving until I tell you. You just saw what I can do!” He turned to the new Tiana. “You want to bind him temporarily with spells, or should I do it?”

“Eventually, yes,” she told him. “We want him an objective critic of me and very well trained by the time we slip him the potions. Uh! This is such a different body! I think I’m taller, perhaps larger, than I was when I was a man! In heels, I’d be taller than he is!”

“So, what do you want to do, other than explore your new self?” the sorcerer asked her. “And, I assume, donning one of the outfits we had the slaves make up.”

Boquillas turned to the new man. “All right—Joe. For the moment, we have to have an understanding. I’ve just thrown a spell on you, and I won’t be careless enough again to remove it. You can move, you can walk and talk and get used to that body. But you cannot harm me, and you cannot harm anyone else, not even yourself. You could even make love to me, but you cannot harm me.”

“I would sooner make love to a horse,” he responded. “It would be obscene to make love to you. Incestuous. It would be like making love to myself.”

“That will pass,” Boquillas assured him. “Over time, the Rules will settle. You may always wish you were me, but you’ll be you, as you are, and you’ll operate normally like that, even naturally, as you became a dancer and a slave. And I, too, will assume the Rules regarding the blood royal, with which, of course, I was already comfortable, having been born into it.”

“Why go through all that?” Sugasto grumbled. “Why not just stick a good hypnotic spell on him right now and be done with it?”

“Patience! Patience! Dear Suggy!” She had a good four or five inches in height on him now, and it felt rather neat. “For one thing, at this moment, and for the first time outside that puny body, we have a relatively ‘clean’ Tiana in that body, unsullied by any spells other than the one I just put on and can thus factor out. I want to see how it moves, how it talks, how it thinks. The words he chooses, the manner of managing a large, muscular body. Those things will fade after a while as the old male mercenary prince pattern re-emerges and takes command. True, I could make him think he’s Joe now and be a fair critic, but there are things even we are not aware of in our movements and actions. Little things. The major stuff can come later. There’s no rush. But this education is priceless.”

“Why didn’t you just put her in that body of yours, then, and observe?” Sugasto asked her. “Then you’d have an exact model.”

“True, true, and I considered it, but I know the Rules all too well. Put her back in here and everything would return full almost immediately. Symmetry would be restored. I don’t know her capabilities yet, and I won’t risk losing our only other original. I can’t explain it, but something just told me that if I put her in this body things would go wrong. Call it—women’s intuition.”

Sugasto shrugged. “I never understood women and I doubt if you do, either, for all your playacting at being one. But, as one with the Power myself, I’ve also learned that you don’t easily ignore such feelings. Very well. But if anything happens to him, anything, I’ll stick you in that damned slave body there, and you’ll lick my feet and kiss my ass for a thousand years!” With that, he stalked out.

“He’s always so cross when he’s tired,” Boquillas commented, seemingly unconcerned.

“It sounds to me as if you have to take as much care of me as you do of yourself,” Tiana noted. “Your death threat against the world does not mean much if you are still alive, but in that body.”

“Anything worthwhile involves risk. My! But you’re the swishiest barbarian I’ve ever seen! Come, we should dress before doing much else, and I’m starved. We don’t feed these bodies right.” She walked out, and suddenly Tiana almost jerked forward, as if on a chain, and had to double-time it to catch up.

“Another of your ideas?” he asked.

“Just a part of the spell, dear. We’re such a devoted couple now that we can’t even bear to let each other out of our sight.”

“That is going to be a lot of fun in the ladies’ room,” Tiana commented, and Boquillas laughed a very un- Tiana laugh.

They were passing the inside tower windows; outside, the inner courtyard glowed with the ever-present fire of the liquid rock. Oh Joe! Joe! I’d join you now, if I could, and end this eternal torture!

And somewhere, deep within her mind, came a voice, a thought, that she wasn’t certain was hers or from some other, perhaps supernatural, origin.

“Bring her to my dying place,” it said. “Bring her there and it will end.”

Even compared to abject slavery, it was the worst evening Tiana ever spent. With Joe gone, nothing seemed to mean much anymore, but she might have been able to learn to live with it, sooner or later, if not for the fact that she was now in Joe’s remaining body and almost umbilically attached to the body of her birth and the